"T'Khotgif!" the man shouted, straining against my hands.
"Soon, Bram." T'Gatoi glanced at me, then placed a claw against his abdomen slightly to the right of the middle, just below the last rib. There was movement on the right side—tiny, seemingly random pulsations moving his brown flesh, creating a concavity here, a convexity there, over and over until I could see the rhythm of it and knew where the next pulse would be.
Lomas's entire body stiffened under T'Gatoi's claw, though she merely rested it against him she wound the rear section of her body around his legs. He might break my grip, but he would not break hers. He wept helplessly as she used his pants to tie his hands, then pushed his hands above his head so that I could kneel on the cloth between them and pin them in place. She rolled up his shirt and gave it to him to bite down on.
And she opened him.
His body convulsed with the first cut. He almost tore himself away from me. The sounds he made. I had never heard such sounds come from anything human. T'Gatoi seemed to pay no attention as she lengthened and deepened the cut, now and then pausing to lick away blood. His blood vessels contracted, reacting to the chemistry of her saliva, and the bleeding slowed.
I felt as though I were helping her torture him, helping her consume him. I knew I would vomit soon, didn't know why I hadn't already. I couldn't possibly last until she was finished.
She found the first grub. It was fat and deep red with his blood—both inside and out. It had already eaten its own egg case, but apparently had not yet begun to eat its host. At this stage, it would eat any flesh except its mother's. Let alone, it would have gone on excreting the poisons that had both sickened and alerted Lomas. Eventually it would have begun to eat. By the time it ate its way out of Lomas's flesh, Lomas would be dead or dying—and unable to take revenge on the thing that was killing him. There was always a grace period between the time the host sickened and the time the grubs began to eat him.
T'Gatoi picked up the writhing grub carefully, and looked at it, somehow ignoring the terrible groans of the man. Abruptly, the man lost consciousness.
"Good," T'Gatoi looked down at him. "I wish you Terrans could do that at will." She felt nothing. And the thing she held…
It was limbless and boneless at this stage, perhaps fifteen centimeters long and two thick, blind and slimy with blood. It was like a large worm. T'Gatoi put it into the belly of the achti, and it began at once to burrow. It would stay there and eat as long as there was anything to eat.
Probing through Lomas' flesh, she found two more, one of them smaller and more vigorous. "A male!" she said happily. He would be dead before I would. He would be through his metamorphosis and screwing everything that would hold still before his sisters even had limbs. He was the only one to make a serious effort to bite T'Gatoi as she placed him in the achti.
Paler worms oozed to visibility in Lomas's flesh. I closed my eyes. It was worse than finding something dead, rotting, and filled with tiny animal grubs. And it was far worse than any drawing or diagram.
"Ah, there are more," T'Gatoi said, plucking out two long, thick grubs. "You may have to kill another animal, Gan. Everything lives inside you Terrans."
I had been told all my life that this was a good and necessary thing Tlic and Terran did together—a kind of birth. I had believed it until now. I knew birth was painful and bloody, no matter what. But this was something else, something worse. And I wasn't ready to see it. Maybe I never would be. Yet I couldn't not see it. Closing my eyes didn't help.
T'Gatoi found a grub still eating its egg case. The remains of the case were still wired into a blood vessel by their own little tube or hook or whatever. That was the way the grubs were anchored and the way they fed. They took only blood until they were ready to emerge. Then they ate their stretched, elastic egg cases. Then they ate their hosts.
T'Gatoi bit away the egg case, licked away the blood. Did she like the taste? Did childhood habits die hard—or not die at all?
The whole procedure was wrong, alien. I wouldn't have thought anything about her could seem alien to me.
"One more, I think," she said. "Perhaps two. A good family. In a host animal these days, we would be happy to find one or two alive." She glanced at me. "Go outside, Gan, and empty your stomach. Go now while the man is unconscious."
I staggered out, barely made it. Beneath the tree just beyond the front door, I vomited until there was nothing left to bring up. Finally, I stood shaking, tears streaming down my face. I did not know why I was crying, but I could not stop. I went farther from the house to avoid being seen. Every time I closed my eyes I saw red worms crawling over redder human flesh.
There was a car coming toward the house. Since Terrans were forbidden motorized vehicles except for certain farm equipment, I knew this must be Lomas's Tlic with Qui and perhaps a Terran doctor. I wiped my face on my shirt, struggled for control.
"Gan," Qui called as the car stopped. "What happened?" He crawled out of the low, round, Tlic-convenient car door. Another Terran crawled out the other side and went into the house without speaking to me. The doctor. With his help and a few eggs, Lomas might make it.
"T'Khotgif Teh?" I said.
The Tlic driver surged out of her car, reared up half her length before me. She was paler and smaller than T'Gatoi probably born from the body of an animal. Tlic from Terran bodies were always larger as well as more numerous.
"Six young," I told her. "Maybe seven, all alive. At least one male."
"Lomas?" she said harshly. I liked her for the question and the concern in her voice when she asked it. The last coherent thing he had said was her name.
"He's alive," I said.
She surged away to the house without another word.
"She's been sick," my brother said, watching her go. "When I called, I could hear people telling her she wasn't well enough to go out even for this."
I said nothing. I had extended courtesy to the Tlic. Now I didn't want to talk to anyone. I hoped he would go in—out of curiosity if nothing else.
"Finally found out more than you wanted to know, eh?" I looked at him.
"Don't give me one of her looks," he said. "You're not her. You're just her property."
One of her looks. Had I picked up even an ability to imitate her expressions?
"What'd you do, puke?" He sniffed the air. "So now you know what you're in for."
I walked away from him. He and I had been close when we were kids. He would let me follow him around when I was home and sometimes T'Gatoi would let me bring him along when she took me into the city. But something had happened when he reached adolescence. I never knew what. He began keeping out of T'Gatoi's way. Then he began running away—until he realized there was no "away." Not in the Preserve. Certainly not outside. After that he concentrated on getting his share of every egg that came into the house, and on looking out for me in a way that made me all but hate him—a way that clearly said, as long as I was all right, he was safe from the Tlic.
"How was it, really?" he demanded, following me. "I killed an achti. The young ate it."
"You didn't run out of the house and puke because they ate an achti."
"I had… never seen a person cut open before." That was true, and enough for him to know. I couldn't talk about the other. Not with him.
"Oh," he said. He glanced at me as though he wanted to say more, but he kept quiet.
We walked, not really headed anywhere. Toward the back, toward the cages, toward the fields.
"Did he say anything?" Qui asked. "Lomas, I mean." Who else would he mean? "He said `T'Khotgif."
Qui shuddered. "If she had done that to me, she'd be the last person I'd call for."
"You'd call for her. Her sting would ease your pain without killing the grubs in you."
"You think I'd care if they died?»
No. Of course he wouldn't. Would I?
"Shit!" He drew a deep breath. "I've seen what they do.
You think this thing with Lomas was bad? It was
nothing."
I didn't argue. He didn't know what he was talking about. "I saw them eat a man," he said.
I turned to face him. "You're lying!"
"I saw them eat a man." He paused. "It was when I was little. I had been to the Hartmund house and I was on my way home. Halfway here, I saw a man and a Tlic and the man was N'Tlic. The ground was hilly. I was able to hide from them and watch. The Tlic wouldn't open the man because she had nothing to feed the grubs. The man couldn't go any farther and there were no houses around. He was in so much pain he told her to kill him. He begged her to kill him. Finally, she did. She cut his throat. One swipe of one claw. I saw the grubs eat their way out, then burrow in again, still eating."
His words made me see Lomas's flesh again, parasitized, crawling. "Why didn't you tell me that?" I whispered.
He looked startled, as though he'd forgotten I was listening. "I don't know."
"You started to run away not long after that, didn't you?" "Yeah. Stupid. Running inside the Preserve. Running in a cage."
I shook my head, said what I should have said to him long ago. "She wouldn't take you, Qui. You don't have to worry." "She would. if anything happened to you."
"No. She'd take Xuan Hoa. Hoa. wants it." She wouldn't if she had stayed to watch Lomas.
"They don't take women," he said with contempt.
"They do sometimes." I glanced at him. "Actually, they prefer women. You should be around them when they talk among themselves. They say women have more body fat to protect the grubs. But they usually take men to leave the women free to bear their own young."
"To provide the next generation of host animals," he said, switching from contempt to bitterness.
"It's more than that!" I countered. Was it?
"If it were going to happen to me, I'd want to believe it was more, too."
"It is more!" I felt like a kid. Stupid argument.
"Did you think so while T'Gatoi was picking worms out of that guy's guts?"
"It's not supposed to happen that way."
"Sure it is. You weren't supposed to see it, that's all. And his Tlic was supposed to do it. She could sting him unconscious and the operation wouldn't have been as painful. But she'd still open him, pick out the grubs, and if she missed even one, it would poison him and eat him from the inside out."
There was actually a time when my mother told me to show respect for Qui because he was my older brother. I walked away, hating him. In his way, he was gloating. He was safe and I wasn't. I could have hit him, but I didn't think I would be able to stand it when he refused to hit back, when he looked at me with contempt and pity.
He wouldn't let me get away. Longer-legged, he swung ahead of me and made me feel as though I were following him.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I strode on, sick and furious.
"Look, it probably won't be that bad with you. T'Gatoi likes you. She'll be careful."
I turned back toward the house, almost running from him. "Has she done it to you vet?" he asked, keeping up easily.
"I mean, you're about the right age for implantation. Has she—"
I hit him. I didn't know I was going to do it, but I think I meant to kill him. If he hadn't been bigger and stronger, I think I would have.
He tried to hold me off, but in the end, had to defend himself. He only hit me a couple of times. That was plenty. I don't remember going down, but when I came to, he was gone. It was worth the pain to be rid of him.
I got up and walked slowly toward the house. The back was dark. No one was in the kitchen. My mother and sisters were sleeping in their bedrooms—or pretending to.
Once I was in the kitchen, I could hear voices—Tlic and Terran from the next room. I couldn't make out what they were saying—didn't want to make it out.
I sat down at my mother's table, waiting for quiet. The table was smooth and worn, heavy and well-crafted. My father had made it for her just before he died. I remembered hanging around underfoot when he built it. He didn't mind. Now I sat leaning on it, missing him. I could have talked to him. He had done it three times in his long life. Three clutches of eggs, three times being opened and sewed up. How had he done it? How did anyone do it?
I got up, took the rifle from its hiding place, and sat down again with it. It needed cleaning, oiling.
All I did was load it.
"Gan?"
She made a lot of little clicking sounds when she walked on bare floor, each limb clicking in succession as it touched down. Waves of little clicks.
She came to the table, raised the front half of her body above it, and surged onto it. Sometimes she moved so smoothly she seemed to flow like water itself. She coiled her-self into a small hill in the middle of the table and looked at me.
"That was bad," she said softly. "You should not have seen it. It need not be that way."
"I know."
"T'Khotgif—Ch'Khotgif now—she will die of her disease. She will not live to raise her children. But her sister will provide for them, and for Bram Lomas." Sterile sister. One fertile female in every lot. One to keep the family going. That sister owed Lomas more than she could ever repay.
"He'll live then?"
"Yes."
"I wonder if he would do it again."
"No one would ask him to do that, again."
I looked into the yellow eyes, wondering how much I saw and understood there, and how much I only imagined. "No one ever asks us," I said. "You never asked me."
She moved her head slightly. "What's the matter with your face?"
"Nothing. Nothing important." Human eyes probably wouldn't have noticed the swelling in the darkness. The only light was from one of the moons, shining through a window across the room.
"Did you use the rifle to shoot the achti?"
"Yes."
"And do you mean to use it to shoot me?"
I stared at her, outlined in moonlight—coiled, graceful body. "What does Terran blood taste like to you?"
She said nothing.
"What are you?" I whispered. "What are we to you?"
She lay still, rested her head on her topmost coil. "You know me as no other does," she said softly. "You must decide."
"That's what happened to my face," I told her.
"What?"
"Qui goaded me into deciding to do something. It didn't turn out very well." I moved the gun slightly, brought the barrel up diagonally under my own chin. "At least it was a decision I made."
"As this will be."
"Ask me, Gatoi."
"For my children's lives?"
She would say something like that. She knew how to manipulate people, Terran and Tlic. But not this time.
"I don't want to be a host animal," I said. "Not even yours."
It took her a long time to answer. "We use almost no host animals these days," she said. "You know that."
"You use us."
"We do. We wait long years for you and teach you and join our families to yours." She moved restlessly. "You know you aren't animals to us."
I stared at her, saying nothing.
"The animals we once used began killing most of our eggs after implantation long before your ancestors arrived," she said softly. "You know these things, Gan. Because your people arrived, we are relearning what it means to be a healthy, thriving people. And your ancestors, fleeing from their homeworld, from their own kind who would have killed or enslaved them—they survived because of us. We saw them as people and gave them the Preserve when they still tried to kill us as worms."
At the word «Worms» I jumped. I couldn't help it, and she couldn't help noticing it.
"I see," she said quietly. "Would you really rather die than bear my young, Gan?"
I didn't answer.
"Shall I go to Xuan Hoa?"
"Yes!" Hoa wanted it. Let her have it. She hadn't had to watch Lomas. She'd be proud. not terrified.
T'Gatoi flowed off the table onto the floor, startling me almost too much.
"I'll slee
p in Hoa's room tonight," she said. "And sometime tonight or in the morning, I'll tell her."
This was going too fast. My sister. Hoa had had almost as much to do with raising me as my mother. I was still close to her—not like Qui. She could want T'Gatoi and still love me.
"Wait! Gatoi!"
She looked back, then raised nearly half her length off the floor and turned it to face me. "These are adult things, Gan. This is my life, my family!"
"But she's. my sister."
"I have done what you demanded. I have asked you!" "But—"
"It will be easier for Hoa. She has always expected to carry other lives inside her."
Human lives. Human young who would someday drink at her breasts, not at her veins.
I shook my head. "Don't do it to her, Gatoi." I was not Qui. It seemed I could become him, though, with no effort at all. I could make Xuan Hoa my shield. Would it be easier to know that red worms were growing in her flesh instead of mine?
"Don't do it to Hoa," 1 repeated.
She stared at me, utterly still.
I looked away, then back at her. "Do it to me."
I lowered the gun from my throat and she leaned forward to take it.
"No," I told her.
"It's the law," she said.
"Leave it for the family. One of them might use it to save my life someday."
She grasped the rifle barrel, but I wouldn't let go. I was pulled into a standing position over her.
"Leave it here!" I repeated. "If we're not your animals, if these are adult things, accept the risk. There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner."
It was clearly hard for her to let go of the rifle. A shudder went through her and she made a hissing sound of distress. It occurred to me that she was afraid. She was old enough to have seen what guns could do to people. Now her young and this gun would be together in the same house. She did not know about our other guns. In this dispute, they did not matter.
"I will implant the first egg tonight," she said as I put the gun away. "Do you hear, Gan?"
Why else had I been given a whole egg to eat while the rest of the family was left to share one? Why else had my mother kept looking at me as though I were going away from her, going where she could not follow? Did T'Gatoi imagine I hadn't known?
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